Update
Friday was a tough day. In the morning before rehab I had a
call from Donna Payne. My Marine buddy from Folsom, LA, who got his lung five
days before me, is in the new Orleans
VA
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Random Thoughts for May, 2015. By
Robert A. Hall
General News and Comment
Oops: Bill Clinton 'Mistakenly' Misreports Taxable Income
as Tax-Free Donations. By Guy Benson
Excerpt: It acknowledged in response to POLITICO’s questions
that it mischaracterized as foundation donations money from the China
Overseas Real Estate Development and the U.S.-Islamic World Conference. That
money was actually honoraria paid for Bill Clinton speeches by those
entities, said foundation officials, who added this week those were the
only mistakes “we are aware of.”
Progressive Hypocrite: George Soros reportedly could
face up to $7B tax bill, after delaying payment for years
Excerpt: George Soros may soon face a monumental tax bill --
of nearly $7 billion -- after years of playing hard-to-get with the IRS. Despite
Soros having advocated for higher taxes on the wealthy, the liberal billionaire
reportedly has delayed paying his own for years thanks to a loophole in U.S.
law. That loophole was closed by Congress in 2008. But before that, Bloomberg reports, Soros used it to defer taxes on client
fees. Instead, he reinvested them in his own fund, and they grew
tax-free.
Interesting: The Unburied
Truth About Jim Jones. By A. J. Delgado
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/377369/unburied-truth-about-jim-jones-j-delgado
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/377369/unburied-truth-about-jim-jones-j-delgado
Excerpt: he Sacrament, a new suspense film closely based on
the 1978 Jonestown massacre, illustrates the extremes to which leftism corrupts
and the ends to which its philosophy can ultimately lead. ...
the Jonestown massacre itself is only dimly known to contemporary Americans,
and the details of the event are often ignored by news and academia. It is,
after all, an inconvenient story, in which a Communist community, led by a
committed Marxist and ’60s Bay Area radical, came to a horrifying end.
Following the mass suicide, the mainstream media spun the story into one of
religious fanaticism rather than leftist fanaticism. Had a right-winger
persuaded followers to join him in retreating from society and building their
own enclave, then held them prisoner and ultimately persuaded or forced them to
take their own lives in some sort of revolutionary act, Jonestown would be
taught more widely in schools than Abe Lincoln. Instead, when Jonestown is
addressed, the Marxism of the People’s Temple
is whitewashed and the story is packaged as one of a religious cult gone awry,
or as a warning against the perils of organized religion.
Excerpt: Michelle Pierre-Farid, the district’s chief
academic officer, explained that most teachers won’t have to adjust their
wardrobes to meet this new standard. However, Pierre-Farid said, she and other
school district officials have seen some teachers lounging into work
wearing jeans, T-shirts and the like on ordinary workdays. Once, Pierre-Farid
remembered, she saw a teacher wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a beer can. On
other occasions, she has seen impressively short skirts and feet festooned with
flip-flops. Students already have a dress code, Pierre-Farid noted. (I still
wear a coat and tie to church, despite all the jeans, tee-shirts and shorts,
for fear my grandmother will rise from her grave, grab me by the earlobe and
march me home to change. When I was in school, male teachers wore coats and
ties, and we had to wear collared shirts and no jeans. Not saying that was why
we got a better education, but part of the decline for sure. ~Bob
Remember the Lusitania
Excerpt: Owning a fragment of history — a Gettysburg
bullet, a Coolidge campaign button — is fun, so in 1968 Gregg Bemis became an owner of the Lusitania.
This 787-feet-long passenger liner has been beneath 300 feet of water off Ireland ’s south
coast since a single German torpedo sank it 100 years ago Thursday. It contains
the 4 million U.S.-made rifle bullets and other munitions that the ship had
been carrying from neutral America
to wartime Britain .
Excerpt: Well, the Communists won the military phase of the
war, only to lose the peace. Under the gross mismanagement and inefficiency
that are the hallmarks of communism, the Vietnamese suffered 17 years of
post-war misery and poverty. Vietnam
became such an economic basket case that the rulers in Hanoi realized that the country was broke,
and that financially broke countries can’t afford the military means to defend
their sovereignty. They capitulated. In 1991 the Communist regime began
introducing free market reforms to at least partially liberate the economy from
the communist bureaucracy that was stifling economic growth. Since then,
foreign investors have become the main driver of Vietnam ’s economy.
Video: Opinion Journal: Vietnam
Rising Dragon News
Excerpt: According to news from USNI, China and Russia
will hold joint naval drills in mid-May in the Mediterranean
Sea . The maneuvers will be the first time the two countries will
hold military exercises together in this part of the world. According to the
Chinese Defence Ministry, China
and Russia
have held naval drills in Pacific waters, but never before in the Med.
Gun News
Victim fatally shoots
alleged carjacker near Minute Maid Park
Excerpt: The victim told Houston police he was getting in his SUV when
a gunman walked up and demanded the keys. That's when the SUV's owner pulled
out a gun of his own and opened fire, killing the suspect at the scene. Police
said another suspect, possibly a lookout, ran away.
Suspected robber shot
in South Seattle
Excerpt: Seattle
police were called to Martin
Luther King Jr. Way South and South Othello Street just after 1:30 p.m.
for a report of gunfire. Officers found a 19-year-old man with gunshot wounds
to his thigh and calf, as well as a broken arm, according to Seattle police.
Witnesses told investigators that the wounded man had
attempted to rob another man outside a nearby store, police wrote in a news
release. “The target of the robbery drew a gun and opened fire on the
19-year-old,” police wrote.
Race Card News
Friend of Charged Cops on Fox: Freddie Gray Was a ‘Great
Witness’ for Us. By Josh Feldman
Excerpt: And perhaps one of the most striking things this
cop told Megyn
Kelly is that Gray snitched for the cops. They told Kelly that in this
case, like in many other cases, Gray would “put on a show” and resist and show
that he wasn’t cooperating with the police, but once he got to the station, he
was a “great witness.” Gray apparently “helped the department solve many crimes
and different acts of violence.”
Video: Freddie Gray
Tested Positive For Heroin And Pot, Cops Saw Him Dealing Drugs!
By soopermexican
http://www.bizpacreview.com/2015/05/02/baltimore-police-mugshots-released-confuse-the-heck-out-of-race-baiters-200727#ixzz3YzTakGVt
Excerpt: That half of the officers are black appears to
dispel the notion that the death of Gray was racially motivated, but the debate
raged on social media:
MSNBC Wonders if Thug
is the New "N" Word
Excerpt: Only at MSNBC could people wonder if the word thug
was the new N-word. (Ya can't fix stupid! --JB. Obama called the rioters in Baltimore thugs. Nazis are
thugs. Skinheads are thugs. Aryan Nation are thugs. MSNBC personnel are just, well, see
below. ~Bob)
Worth Reading : David Simon on Baltimore
Excerpt: David
Simon is Baltimore ’s
best-known chronicler of life on the hard streets. He worked for The Baltimore
Sun city desk for a dozen years, wrote “Homicide:
A Year on the Killing Streets” (1991) and with former homicide
detective Ed Burns co-wrote “The
Corner: A Year In The Life Of An Inner-City Neighborhood”1 (1997),
which Simon adapted into an HBO miniseries. He is the creator, executive
producer and head writer of the HBO television series “The Wire”
(2002–2008). Simon is a member of The Marshall Project’s advisory board. He
spoke with Bill Keller on Tuesday. BK: What do people outside the city need to
understand about what’s going on there — the death of Freddie Gray and the
response to it? DS: I guess there's an awful lot to understand and I’m not sure
I understand all of it. The part that seems systemic and connected is that the
drug war — which Baltimore waged as aggressively as any American city — was
transforming in terms of police/community relations, in terms of trust,
particularly between the black community and the police department. Probable
cause was destroyed by the drug war. It happened in stages, but even in the
time that I was a police reporter, which would have been the early 80s to the
early 90s, the need for police officers to address the basic rights of the
people they were policing in Baltimore
was minimized.
Worth Reading : Stand
Up for Baltimore
Excerpt: There are real victims in Baltimore . They are the hundreds of thousands
of people who have been forced out by riots, crime and misery. You can see some
of the real victims still hanging on, trying to run stores on thin margins,
sweeping up broken glass and talking about how they called the police and no
one answered. They, and not Freddie Gray and his fellow criminals, are the real
victims. They're not just the victims of the thugs threatening their lives and
destroying their livelihood. They're also the victims of wealthy and powerful
politicians like Sheila Dixon, Rawlings-Blake and Barack Obama. (Greenfield is not holding
back on this one, not at all. And the sad thing is that it's hard to figure out
how things will ever get better in Baltimore, if the people keep voting in
incompetents and crooks, for whom the whole trip to power is about playing
the race deck day in and day out, and who somehow don't become objects of scorn
and lessons for the people in who NOT to elect. But then again, suppose some
honest, principled person got elected to be Mayor. He or she would be facing
such a longstanding mess with such enormous inertia that you wonder how they
could possibly start to really turn things around. When 30 years of
incompetence and decline have set the stage, industry has left, people have
left, the tax base is down, all kinds of things need repair or rebuilding, how
can anyone turn over some new leaf and reverse all the negativity and get all
the civil servants to pitch in and work harder than ever before, get the unions
to give concessions, and get the citizens to feel a lot better about their city
and their lives and their opportunities? I sure don't know! But they sure need
something a whole lot better than they have now. --Del )
Marilyn Mosby Called
For Special Prosecutor In Michael Brown Case But Refuses Calls For Recusal
[VIDEO]
Excerpt: “It is clear that your husband’s political
future will be directly impacted, for better or worse, by the outcome of your
investigation,” Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police president Gene Ryan said
after Mosby’s charging announcement....Mosby is also close to Billy Murphy Jr.,
the attorney representing the Gray family. Murphy donated $5,000 to Mosby’s
political campaign and was a member of her transition committee following her
November election, the Baltimore Sun reported. (Gee, in the Old West, they'd
have gotten 6 horses and made 6 nooses and put the cops on the horses and
lynched them right there. Notably, Mosby used the pronoun "our," not
separating herself as a public servant seeking true, legitimate justice, but
rather joining the black liberation/Nation of Islam, SEIU, etc., folks. Also
did not condemn those "youth" who looted, burned, cut fire hoses,
threatened/harmed first responders and did a lot of damage to the grocery store
that donated to the senior center in the area and destroyed the CVS drug store
that filled their prescriptions....and also their homes. But that is all
approved by the black liberation community. --Barb)
“Activist” Unleashes
Vile Anti-American Rant While She Desecrates The Flag
Excerpt: In honor of Eric Sheppard—a black college student
wanted in Georgia after his
gun was allegedly found on campus during a series of protests—a few black Atlanta women are making
their own videos while they stomp on the American flag. As previously reported
by Campus Reform, a group of African-American protesters walked on the American
flag at Valdosta State University
Obamacare/Government Healthcare News
Excerpt: Americans’ tax burden is already $3 billion heavier
because of Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare. By
putting more able-bodied, working-age childless adults on Medicaid than Kasich
projected, Obamacare expansion is reducing
incentives to work and threatening
traditional Medicaid recipients’ access to care faster and at greater
cost than anticipated. After Kasich expanded Medicaid unilaterally, a
state panel approved $2.56 billion in Obamacare spending for the expansion’s
first 18 months. The money was meant to last until July, but it
ran out in February.
"You're Greener than Gore" News
Harvard Poll: Young Americans Are Becoming Global
Warming Skeptics. by Michael Bastasch
Excerpt: A Harvard Public Opinion Project, reported by the
Harvard Political Review, found that
the “assumption that younger adults are more liberal when it comes to global
warming does not hold up; if anything, they are even more skeptical.” Not only
that, but young Americans are not very supportive of government efforts to
regulate carbon dioxide.
The Harvard poll found that the “youngest survey respondents
were more conservative than any other age group, with only 28 percent of 18 to
20-year-olds” agreeing that the government should do more to fight global
warming. The survey also found that only “eight percent [of young people are]
in strong agreement with that statement.”
Religion of Peace News
Excerpt: On Tuesday, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps
forcibly commandeered the Maersk Tigris as navigated its way through the
Straits of Hormuz. Iran
controls the strategic waterway through which 40 percent of seaborne oil and a
quarter of seaborne gas transits to global markets. The Maersk Tigris is
flagged to the Marshall
Islands . The South Pacific archipelago
gained its independence from the US
in 1986 after signing a treaty conceding its right to self-defense in exchange
for US
protection. According to the treaty, the US
has “full authority and responsibility for security and defense of the Marshall Islands .”
ISIS militants
execute 600 Yezidis northern Iraq
Excerpt: On Friday the so-called Sharia Court of the Islamic
State group (IS/ISIS) reportedly executed 600 hostages from the Yezidi
community of Shingal (Sinjar) in the Talafar district in northern Iraq . The
group piled the bodies into the well of Alo Antar on al-Ayyadiya highway, local
sources reported. Shahin Shingali, a fighter in the ranks of the Peshmerga
forces, stated to ARA News that since Friday the IS radicals transferred nearly
700 Yezidi hostages to Talafar.
Speaking Out About
Islam Could Become Hate Crime
Excerpt: Great
Britain has an Islam problem, as do many
European countries. Many Muslims fail to assimilate. They want to bring their
Muslim culture, religion, and laws with them and displace the existing way of
life. They freely admit this. In fact, Islamic leaders have made it clear that
the long-term goal is to make Great
Britain into a caliphate.
"We have the Swords"-
Nasheed from Islamic State's Ajnad Media. By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi
War poetry from ISIS . The
West used to have War Poetry--Kipling, Alan Seeger. Now we have Metrosexual
Musings, without rhyme or meter as that takes work and thought. Must not forget
"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" by Julia Ward Howe. " I have read
a fiery gospel writ
in burnished rows of steel, As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace
shall deal, Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the
serpent with his heel..." ~Bob
Excerpt: In a tweet last month, Jund al Aqsa, an al
Qaeda-linked jihadist group in Syria ,
identified Adel Radi Saker al Wahabi al Harbi as its fallen military commander.
Al Harbi was wanted by the US
government, had previously served as the deputy leader of al Qaeda's Iran network,
and was a member of al Qaeda's so-called "Khorasan Group."
Video: Arab Muslim Slave Trade Of Africans: 140+
million slaves
Worth Hearing. ~Bob
Too little, too late: A seat at the table in Afghanistan
Excerpt: For years, Afghan women have advocated for their
rightful place in talks about the future of Afghanistan . They’ve been shut out,
put off, ignored, given token roles and patronized with promises that they
don’t need to be there themselves — the men in the room will look after them.
(Doesn't matter. Anything the Taliban concede to women will go out the window
once they are in power and can enforce their version of Shari'a Law. The Qur'an
makes it quite clear that "men are in charge of women. See my poem,
written a few years ago. "When the Taliban Come back." http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2009/11/when-taliban-comes-back.html.
~Bob)
Cowards: 145 American Writers Think Honoring Charlie
Hebdo is 'Islamophobic.' By Phyllis Chesler
Excerpt: Salman Rushdie, a writer who knows what it is to
pay the price for having criticized Islam and is also a former President of PEN
had this to say: They are "six authors in search of character." He is right. They
do not know how to stand up to the false charge of "Islamophobia."
(Cowards. Not one of them would have a problem mocking Christians or Jews,
because they won't come after you with AK-47s. ~Bob)
Islamic State demands
$23 million for Christian hostages. By Robert Spencer, JihadWatch.org
Excerpt: They’re acting in full accord with Islamic law.
Here is a salient passage on this issue from a Shafi’i manual of Islamic law:
When an adult male is taken captive, the caliph considers the interests … (of
Islam and the Muslims) and decides between the prisoner’s death, slavery,
release without paying anything, or ransoming himself in exchange for money or
for a Muslim captive held by the enemy. (Umdat al-Salik o9.14)
Muslim cleric: Jews
“malignant tumor” that “can only be treated by eradication.” By Robert Spencer,
JihadWatch.org
Excerpt: This is not what the world considers hate
speech. What the world considers hate speech is opposing this.
IS Hides Heavy Weaponry at Religious Sites. They know that
jets won’t shell mosques and churches, Iraqi official says. By Sardar Sattar
Excerpt: A member of the Nineveh
Province council has revealed that
Islamic State (IS) hides heavy weapons in mosques and churches in Mosul to avoid air
strikes. Hanin Ghado said in a press conference on 29th April that IS
insurgents mostly settle in the densely populated areas of Mosul to hide themselves among civilians, and
they use mosques and churches to store heavy weapons. Ghado said, “They use the
mosques and churches because they know that the coalition jets won’t shell holy
locations.
*****
Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who served five
terms in the Massachusetts State Senate. He is the author of The Coming Collapse of the American Republic.
http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-American-Republic-prevent/dp/1461122538/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304815980&sr=1-5
For a free PDF of Collapse, e-mail him at tartanmarine(at)gmail.com. Hall’s
eleven books are listed here:
http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-book-published.html.
His blog of political news and conservative comment is www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com.
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